Marguerite Perey

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Marguerite Catherine Perey (born October 19, 1909 in Villemomble , † May 13, 1975 in Louveciennes ) was a French chemist and physicist .

Life

Perey studied chemistry at the Ecole d'Enseignement Technique Feminine with a diploma in 1929. She worked from 1929 to 1946 at the Radium Institute, until 1934 as an assistant to Marie Curie . During this period she spent a lot of time in rooms where radioactive material was stored, in 1929 even in her living room. So she sustained considerable radiation damage, which later caused cancer in her.

She received her doctorate from the Sorbonne in 1946 . She then headed the Radium Institute ( Institut du Radium ) in Paris for three years , before being appointed to a chair in radiochemistry at the University of Strasbourg in 1949 . In 1939, Perey discovered the last naturally occurring element, francium , which was undiscovered at the time , an element from the group of alkali metals as a short-lived radioactive decay product of actinium . Her notebook made a first note of this on January 7, 1939. Two days later, on January 9, the French Académie des Sciences received a message about the discovery. The new element was initially called Actinium-K and was named Francium in 1946 in honor of the discoverer's country of birth.

Around 1960 she was diagnosed with bone cancer, which cost her eyesight and a hand. The pianist was therefore no longer able to devote herself to her music in old age.

On March 12, 1962, she was the first woman to be accepted as a corresponding member of the Académie des sciences , an honor that her mentor Curie was denied.

In 1960 she became an officer of the Legion of Honor and received the Grand Prize of the City of Paris. In 1964 she received the Lavoisier Prize of the Academie des Sciences and the silver medal of the French Chemical Society. In 1974 she became commander of the Ordre national du Mérite .

Selected publications

  • Marguerite Perey, "Sur un élément 87, dérivé de l'actinium" , CR Hebd. Seances Acad. Sci. 208 : 97-99 (1939) full text
  • Marguerite Perey and Jean-Pierre Adloff, "Sur la descendance de l'actinium k: 22387Fr" , Journal de Physique et Le Radium, 17 (7) : 545-547 (1956) doi : 10.1051 / jphysrad: 01956001707054500

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Antonius Lux (ed.): Great women of world history. A thousand biographies in words and pictures . Sebastian Lux Verlag , Munich 1963, p. 372.
  2. ↑ chemeducator.org: Francium (Atomic Number 87), the Last Discovered Natural Element ( Memento from June 15, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on January 8, 2011.
  3. ↑ New York Times article , December 7, 2014.
  4. ↑ Les Membres de l'Académie des sciences depuis sa création (en 1666) .
  5. ^ Jean-Pierre Adloff, George B. Kauffman: Triumph over Prejudice: The Election of Radiochemist Marguerite Perey (1909-1975) to the French Académie des Sciences . In: The Chemical Educator . Volume 10, No. Issue 5, 2005, pp. 395-399; doi : 10.1333 / s00897050955a .
personal data
SURNAME Perey, Marguerite
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Perey, Marguerite Catherine
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French chemist and physicist
DATE OF BIRTH October 19, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Villemomble
DATE OF DEATH May 13, 1975
Place of death Louveciennes